Oxygen by Carol Cassella

Author:Carol Cassella
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Medical, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781416556107
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008-07-01T07:00:00+00:00

The phone is ringing again. I’ve unplugged my bedroom extension but the noise radiates across my kitchen wall and through the pillow I’ve wrapped around my head. Four rings and then a pause, in which I know my most cheerful and self-confident voice, eternally imperturbable, is telling the caller to leave a message.

It’s dusk outside now; I must have slept all day. The street noises are picking up with the flirtatious laughter of college students opening the bars on a Friday evening. The ringing starts again and I fumble down the hallway into my kitchen to pull the cord out of the wall. Outside my living room the towers of downtown are glittering shadow boxes—squares and rectangles are illuminated as cleaning crews replace secretaries.

And there is Joe. Staring up at my living room from the street corner, waiting for my lights to go on. Waiting for me to finally pick up the phone. I coil my fingers around the braided cords of the slatted blinds and lower them to the floor. But fifteen minutes later when I hear him at my front door I unlock it.

“Hi.” He stands with his hands tucked into the fraying pockets of his old blue jean jacket. He is exactly what I need right now, though I would have denied that a minute ago.

“How’d you get into my building?”

“I still have your key. Karen called me after you left this morning—she was worried. The baby’s fine. He went home early this afternoon.” He lifts his shoulders slightly and says, “So, should I come in?”

I reach out and take his hand and lead him inside. We walk to the sofa, he sits and draws me down against him, my back curved against his chest, his arms wrapped across my abdomen. I sink into him and remember his solid weight, the comfortable arc of his neck along the back of my head.

“Marie.” He hugs me closer as he pulls words together, his breath so soft through my hair. “This…this little girl’s death has been terrible for you. Harder than the malpractice suit. But it’s eclipsing everything else in your life. It’s overshadowing all the care you’ve given a thousand patients before her death. It’s jeopardizing all the patients you’ll take care of in the years ahead.” He rocks me, quietly and rhythmically; his beard lightly brushes my ear. He waits for a response, but I have none.

“This time will pass. This lawsuit will come to an end at some point. None of the OR staff hold you responsible—the nurses and techs think the world of you, you know that. The hospital is behind you. You’ve got a great legal team. And you have a life ahead of you filled with work I know you love—work you do superbly.”

I stare into the darkening room, lit only by wedges of city light gleaming between the blinds. Familiar paintings and sculptures take on odd shapes in the gloom.

“There’s something I haven’t told you yet,” I say at last. “No one knows about it yet.

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